• HerbGrower@slrpnk.net
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    2 days ago

    Given the amount of food that is lost in making meat, could this be more a case of just having to change what people eat rather than the apocalypse that some seem to make it sound like?

    The amount of land and water required to feed someone on beef, compared to the amount required to feed them oats?

    Now I am curious how that looks with fertiliser too. Kcal yield of growing oats without fertiliser compared to kcal yield of beef even if you use fertiliser to grow their food.

    • translucent_tube@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Saw a yt video recently that claimed the calorie efficiency of eating cows is about 3% (which sounds reasonable if you think about it). So then for every 100 calories we feed a cow, a human eats 3.

      So even if you do use fertilizer to grow all of it… Growing 30 times less of it to fill the same need is a massive difference.

      And then there’s the reduction of green house gasses that goes along with that too.

      • HerbGrower@slrpnk.net
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        2 days ago

        So unless fertiliser results in more than 30x yield, the cow is worse than eating the food directly.

        Only thing is if its grass fed then its food humans can’t eat. But grain or soy fed cattle? We could eat that! And I can’t imagine many people are using fertiliser to grow grass. Well, except people into lawns.